


In Light of Day

by prosodiical



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Drabble Sequence, Falling In Love, M/M, Romantic Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-11-28 19:51:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11424987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prosodiical/pseuds/prosodiical
Summary: Ten snapshots of Graves's life, after. (Mostly, he falls in love.)





	In Light of Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Evandar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evandar/gifts).



> I just had to write a drabble series for you - I hope you like it! :)

Afterward, Graves goes back to work.

He's lost something, he knows. It's in the way everyone at MACUSA tiptoes around him, the way he sees an imposter in every glimpse of his reflection. His magic sparks at every shadow and he clears out his office and home with an unhurried efficiency until there's nothing left but the fragments of a life half-lived.

And then there's Newt.

Newt, who's wrestling with an Occamy in the hallway, his case half-open on the floor: "Please don't - "

"Do you need a hand?" Graves asks, and Newt smiles, startlingly bright.

"Oh - yes please, thank you."

 

 

He first met Newt while he was recovering. He was hovering uncertainly as Tina briefed Graves, guilt scrawled across her face. "Don't apologise," Graves said when she stopped, and she pursed her mouth, shaking her head.

"I should've known - "

"Tina," Newt said carefully, stepping forward. "It's good to meet you, Mr Graves."

"I hope I'm an improvement over the last," Graves said wryly. 

Newt, smiling, said, "Oh, I think you'll do."

The next time Graves saw him, his stomach twisted, his heart raced. He thought, _really?_ but he couldn't begrudge himself this: a sweet hopefulness he had thought he'd lost.

 

 

He sees Newt on and off as the days wear on. He flits by in a whirlwind of color, carrying pastries or talking to the Goldstein sisters, always with his everpresent case.

Graves manages to catch him, once, to say thank you; Newt's smile in return is tentative and sweet.

"Please," Newt says, "don't mention it."

"If I can do anything to help you - " Graves starts.

"Oh, I'm sure you will. You already have, you know." Newt's glance at Graves makes his cheeks pink at whatever he sees in Graves's face, and Graves can't help watching as he hurries away.

 

 

There's something to be said about having a magizoologist under MACUSA's employ, and one of them is his unfazed response to being covered in magic-resistant goo.

"It's just a defense mechanism," Newt explains, scrubbing futilely at his hair with an Auror-supplied towel. "Spot didn't mean it."

"Spot," Graves repeats. The hulking, slime-covered creature now sequestered in Newt's case couldn't look less like a 'Spot' if it tried. "Really?"

Newt peeks at him through his eyelashes, swaddled in a towel and pink with goo. "Do you think I can keep him?"

Graves sighs, resolve crumbling under Newt's hopeful smile. "I'll see."

 

 

The fifth time Graves has to rescue his pocketwatch from a Niffler's pouch is, he thinks, more than enough; he has a few choice words on the tip of his tongue for when he sees Newt again.

But when he does, Newt says gratefully, "Wonderful, just watch this a moment - "

Graves finds himself holding a cracking egg in his palm. A beak pokes out, then a head, and he watches as the fluffy Fwooper chick peeks out.

"I'm sorry - did you need something?" Newt takes it carefully from his hands.

The recriminations die in Graves's throat. "No. Nothing at all."

 

 

"This isn't your home, you idiot creature," Graves says. The tiny Fwooper hops away from his absent brush-away, chirping twice before Graves's implicit threat of a silencing charm makes it droop. "I know you have one. Go."

Stubbornly, it digs its talons further into his coat.

"He's likely imprinted on you," Newt tells him later, with no apparent regret. "I - hm."

"What?"

"No, I'm sorry." Newt's biting back a smile. "I think you're stuck with him."

"I don't have a place for a bird," Graves says. "Here."

Newt takes it, but offers, tentatively, "He thinks has a place with you."

 

 

Perhaps he should have known this would happen. There's a slow inundation of creatures into Graves's life, from the Fwooper chick growing larger every time he sees it to a Bowtruckle he finds peeking guiltily out of his bookcase one day, not to mention the Niffler who seems to steal everyone's things unreservedly, but Graves's pocketwatch most of all. It takes him to Newt each and every time, carrying a creature or looking for his belongings, and while Graves appreciates the excuse to see him he wonders, sometimes, if --

Then Newt glances at him, thoughtful and smiling, and Graves knows.

 

 

He kisses Newt right there in the empty hallway, pressing him back against the wall. Newt's hands clutch at Graves's hair as he breathes a laugh, lost between them as Graves kisses him again, stealing Newt's smile and tasting him on his tongue. 

Graves's hands slide to Newt's hips as he kisses him, Newt's mouth hot and wet and willing under his own; Newt pulls him closer when Graves presses kisses to Newt's jaw.

"We really shouldn't - " Newt starts, flushed pink and smiling, and Graves says:

"Not here?"

"No," Newt says, surreptitiously glancing around, and pulls Graves into his case.

 

 

Even so, it comes slowly. Graves is always busy and Newt spends weeks chasing creatures across the world. They try dating: dinner turns awkward, drinking and dancing worse, and it's only when Graves takes him home that Newt relaxes under his touch. Graves presses a gentle kiss to his spine, feeling lost.

"I don't mind," Newt says tentatively. "I mean - you're not enjoying it either, are you?"

"Now is when you call me a workaholic," Graves says wryly, and Newt smiles as he twists around, pulling him in for a lazy kiss.

"You are," he says, "but - I am, too."

 

 

Afterward, Graves goes back to work.

There's the ongoing minor chaos of dealing with creatures they no longer exterminate, of Grindelwald's influence slowly being removed. His Aurors stop looking guilty every time they see him and Newt sometimes stops by with pastries in the shape of Nifflers and Occamies and that slime monster he still calls Spot.

And then there's home. 

Newt comes and goes, and with him there's a Fwooper growing obnoxiously large that needs to be silenced and a Niffler that steals Graves's shiniest things and a million other creatures Graves doesn't yet know.

It's okay. He will.


End file.
